


Doomed Youth

by Ritequette



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Angst, Lots of Angst, M/M, Reading my stories, You should be used to that by now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-07-29 11:55:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7683553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ritequette/pseuds/Ritequette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The devastating report comes into Komui's office on a rainy Monday morning, precisely at eight o'clock: Allen Walker and Howard Link. Killed in Action.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?_

_— Only the monstrous anger of the guns._

_Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle_

_Can patter out their hasty orisons._

_No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;_

_Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—_

_The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;_

_And bugles calling for them from sad shires._

_What candles may be held to speed them all?_

_Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes_

_Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes._

_The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;_

_Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,_

_And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds._

 

__—_ Anthem for Doomed Youth_ by Wilfred Owen

 

***

 

Link wakes to silence. 

There’s not a bird in the sky, chirping. There’s not an animal skulking along in the bushes. There’s not a fly buzzing on a windowsill, or a mosquito buzzing in an ear. There’s no pitter-patter of rain on the cobblestones in the small town on the hill above. Or the hum of activity of a community packing up their markets and shops for a good day’s end.

There is silence. Absolute.

Link’s training dredges itself from the depths of his hazy mind, head throbbing with each heavy breath. He assesses the situation. He can’t hear anything, except the pounding of his heart, logically because there is nothing to hear. The town that was bustling this morning, when he and Walker arrived, no longer has any inhabitants. And the forest is quiet because the woodland creatures, large and small, prey and predator, have all been driven away by whatever caused the human population to…die? Run?

A heavy eyelid rises enough for Link to peer up the hill, through the thick, prickly foliage he’s somehow found himself tangled in. The buildings on the edge of town appear intact, but that doesn’t mean akuma didn’t rampage through the streets, turning everyone to dust. Link spies no smoke from fires, no obvious debris, but it could easily be his vantage point impeding him.

He won’t be able to figure out exactly what happened unless he gets himself up and walking again. Which may, in practice, be impossible. Because every twitch of his limbs sends pain coursing through his body, and Link can’t figure out, for the life of himself, how he could have screwed up to the point of being _this_ injured. He’s been wounded on missions before, certainly, but…he takes stock of himself.

His right wrist is broken, but it’s not a compound fracture. The bone is still beneath the skin, thank goodness. His ribs, at least two or three, are cracked, and his entire rib cage feels bruised, like someone took a blunt object to his chest. Three out of five fingers on his left hand are so badly broken they’re not even pointing in the right direction, and Link isn’t sure how he’s going to stand up and maneuver around without the use of either hand…

…if he can even stand. When he tests his toes, hot white pain zings up his spine. Link groans, and then bites his tongue. Because he broke the silence, and if there’s an enemy anywhere in the vicinity, he probably just alerted them to his position. He tenses, ignoring the persistent throbbing aches in his muscles, and waits for a response. Two minutes. Five minutes. Ten minutes.

Nothing. There’s no one else around.

No one at all. 

A pit of something that might be fear eats into his stomach, and he swallows thickly.

Link tries to move his legs again, only to realize that, in addition to whatever damage has been done to the vertebrae in his lower back, his left knee is dislocated. So, no, he won’t be walking out of here. He lets his face fall back into the patch of prickly leaves and sighs quietly into the still evening air. There’s not a cloud in the sky, no moon either, rising up as the distant sun sinks lower and lower beneath the horizon. It’ll be dark soon, and Link can’t get up. And there’s no one around to help him.

He ties to think of a time he’s felt this weak and useless before—and fails. He’s never let himself get this injured in combat, and he wonders what on earth happened… 

A thought occurs to him—he reaches up with the hand of assorted broken fingers and feels around his skull with the two good digits. Searching for a head wound. Because the harder he thinks about how he ended up in a prickly bush outside an empty town, the more he realizes that there’s a literal blank spot in his memory. There are impressions, in the gap, between the last thing he really remembers and now, but they’re so faint and blurred and—he finds it. A bloody laceration on the side of his head. 

He was literally knocked senseless and has short-term amnesia. Not uncommon, he knows. He’ll likely regain the memories soon. But will it be soon enough? To help him out of this situation?

Link tries his legs one more time, and his lower back screams. So badly that Link has to bite his lip to hide the cry. His lip splits under the pressure, and he tastes blood. When the wave of agony passes, Link lets his body go completely lax. Straining himself in this condition clearly isn’t going to help. If he’s to advance in any direction, it’ll have to be with his memory.

He recalls the last major points he remembers: 

First, he and Walker got off a train at a small town a few hours outside of Paris. Then, they’d walked another three miles to this even smaller town with no train service to speak of. They’d checked into their inn, which only had a handful of rooms and no plumbing whatsoever, and then…then they’d gone out Innocence hunting. Because there was supposedly a shard stashed in this tiny village somewhere. And akuma were starting to take notice, according to the Finder’s report.

It had only been lunchtime when he and Walker first set out. Naturally, they’d stopped at a restaurant to eat, because Walker couldn’t go two hours without gorging himself. Not that Link entirely blamed him, with the parasitic arm. But it was mightily inconvenient at times, even if Link, too, enjoyed meals. Especially desert.

So they’d eaten, and then…? 

_Ah_ , and then they’d visited the places the Finder had thought the Innocence might be hidden. The town had a few local legends centered around certain objects: a couple of statues, an old, rundown church, a well on the very edge of town surrounded by nothing, where a small cabin had once stood. Link and Walker had investigated each one, thoroughly, only to find…nothing. There was no Innocence in any of these places, and Link was rather annoyed by that.

It wasn’t because he considered it a personal failure on his part, but rather that he had a lot of work to do back at the Order, and the entire trip to this village hidden away from the world appeared to be delaying him for no reason. It was almost like there wasn’t any Innocence at all, despite their Finder’s rock-solid reports of strange activity and akuma presence. Which, Link had thought at the time, as he and Walker trudged back to the main street market, was rather odd.

Because in the entire time he’d been in the town, he’d noticed no strange activity whatsoever.

And neither had Walker.

Walker had mentioned that to him outright, hadn’t he?

Yes, he had. They stopped at a street vendor in the market and picked up, yet again, more food, and then they’d headed to a small but popular fountain in the middle of town to eat a light dinner before making another round for their search. And Allen had said it to him— _Isn’t it kind of weird that the Finder reported so much activity, but there’s literally nothing off about this place? It’s so normal. Usually, when Innocence is involved…_

And if _Allen_ had noticed the oddness of the situation, then Link couldn’t be wrong about it.

Something strange was going on, and strange for the Black Order meant dangerous.

This is where Link’s memory grows the foggiest. He remembers finishing his bread and cheese, followed by a small pastry he quite enjoyed, before he and Walker decided to search some of the spots in town they’d overlooked earlier. He remembers heading away from the market, the crowds thinning out until they were the only two in a maze of narrow backstreets and alleys. He remembers Walker saying something to him—a joke, perhaps?—and himself chastising Walker for not taking the mission seriously. He remembers…

He remembers…

Red-clad bodies descending from the roofs, from every nook and cranny large enough to hide a person, from every shadow dark enough to mask violent intentions. The glint of knives on the late afternoon sun, the sharp sound of air sliced apart by flying blades. The crinkling of paper tags in the moment of the invocation of a spell, a binding spell. The scent of smoke on the air, paper catching fire in the strongest magic defense Link had ever learned.

And still, it hadn’t been enough. Not to stop the Crows. Ten Crows versus one Crow and an exorcist who had no idea what hell was descending upon him. Walker had been shocked, shocked into complete inaction, at the sight of the Order’s own trying to drive a dagger into his chest. Trying to slit his throat. Trying to snap his neck. 

Link had been shocked, too—but that was the thing about Crows; they weren’t trained for inaction. So Link had responded. Had fought back. With everything he had. Until Walker had finally snapped out of his stupor and activate his Innocence—only for it to be immediately bound by two Crows working together to restrain him. With a third coming at him with another sharp, sharp knife. 

Link hadn’t had enough time to think. Not nearly enough time. He enjoyed strategy far more than thinking in the moment—it was cleaner, neater, not as bloody. And this time was no exception. In the split second he’d had to ward off the Crows attacking _him_ —not just the heretic, but Howard Link, Inspector, like they thought he was a traitor too—in that moment, blindly fighting back, in desperation, against imminent death…

He had unleashed a counterattack spell he’d never used in combat before today.

Link, lying in the prickly bush, unable to move an inch, glances up yet again at the town on the hill. And he knows, without a doubt, that at least a quarter of the town, some part out of his sight, is no longer standing. It’s rubble now. Rubble and ash. And anyone in that part of town, Crows included, is dead. Except for whoever Link dragged into his protective circle in the final moment—a circle that clearly didn’t do its job properly, judging by his own injures. Except for, Link prays, Allen Walker.

Because if Allen Walker was caught in that explosion, then—

Sound.

Hurried, panicked footsteps headed his way, stumbling around through the forest behind him. Link tries to turn his head in the opposite direction, but his injured body refuses to shift enough for him to peer at his oncoming potential foe. He lets his eyes slip closed, resigned to whatever awaits him. Because that’s all he can do at this point. He used his last great “trick” up in the town, and nearly blew himself up.

Lvellie would be disappointed, Link knows. He was supposed to be better than this. And Walker…Walker had been his responsibility, heretic or not, his to monitor, his to guard, and Link had probably killed him with a badly timed spell. Even with Crown Clown, Allen would’ve been critically injured, so…God, Link had killed an exorcist. He’d killed a sixteen-year-old _boy_.

He curses himself for his unforgivable mistake, wondering if he deserves what’s coming when—

Allen Walker lopes out of the woods, over Link’s head, and skids to a stop on the grass on the other side. Link’s eyes shoot wide open, not quite believing what he’s seeing. Walker is injured, his face a bloody, swollen mess, hair matted with mud, right arm bent awkwardly. But he’s alive. Breathing. Clearly in better shape than Link himself. And…crying?

Walker sinks to his knees in front of Link, tears streaming down his face. “Link?” he says in between sobs. “Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay.” 

Link wonders idly for a moment if he can muster a voice, and then tries. It comes out as a rasp. “I can’t move, Walker. I’ve got a back injury, among other things.”

Walker runs his Innocence arm through his hair, revealing a wide laceration on his right temple still weeping blood. He’s breathing heavily, like he’s been running for miles, and Link thinks he must have been thrown some distance. Either that, or he’s been searching for his lost monitor for sometime. He hadn’t realized Walker would go to such lengths to—

“We need to get you to a doctor, then, right?” He crawls closer to Link on his knees, gnawing on his bottom lip, and up close, Link can see his nose is slightly out of alignment. Broken. “Do you think I can carry you? Back over to the town with the train station? Or…somewhere else? Do we _need_ to go…somewhere else, Link?” 

Fear. Link can see it rolling off Walker’s skin in waves, even through his still-foggy mind. Walker is terrified, in a way Link has never seen him scared. Not during Lulu Bell’s attack on the Order. Not during _any_ mission they’ve been on together. Not even the night Cross told Walker he was the host for the 14 th Noah. Link watches, silent, as Walker begins to shake, harder and harder, and his sobs grow more intense. Link has seen him cry, yes, many times—but not like this. 

And just like with Walker’s appetite, Link can’t blame him for _this_ either. 

Because Walker isn’t the only one who’s scared. Link is, too. Even though he can barely feel it right now, through the pain radiating through every nerve, he knows it’s there, hiding in the shadow of his soul, ready and waiting to emerge as soon as he’s well enough to consider the full implications of what has transpired today. And as soon as the reality settles on Link’s shoulders—that preying fear will change him in ways he can’t consider in this moment.

He wets his lips with a bloody tongue and replies to Walker’s question. “Yes, Walker. We need to go _somewhere else_.”

What’s left of Walker’s bravado collapses under the weight of his grief, and he winds up on the ground, next to Link, Innocence arm slung over his eyes, teeth gritted tight to hold back his weeping. “I…I don’t understand, Link. I don’t understand. What did I… _do_?”

If there’s one thing Link knows about the circumstances leading up this disaster, it’s that Walker did nothing at all. The decision makers aren’t here now, lying on the ground, injured and scared. And they’re not charred corpses in the town either. The decision makers are a world away, sitting at their fancy oak desks in Central, walking the vast halls of the Church’s throne in the Vatican City.

No, Allen Walker did nothing at all to warrant this attack. And neither did Link.

And it wasn’t Lvellie—it couldn’t have been, not after he expressed, underhandedly, so much interest in Walker’s “future.” An interest that had bothered Link for some time, though he’d never admitted as much until now.

So, if it wasn’t Walker, himself, or Lvellie that caused a murder of Crows to attack, an assassination squad if Link has ever seen one, then that can only mean one thing.

Someone _else_ in Central wants Walker dead. Someone powerful enough to command Crows in absolute secrecy. Someone powerful enough to override the Order’s need for exorcists with their own, tainted will. 

Someone wants Allen Walker dead. And they’ll do _anything_ to make good on that desire. 

Which means Walker, and by association, Link, cannot, under any circumstances, return to the Black Order.

Ever.


	2. Chapter 2

The devastating report comes into Komui’s office on a rainy Monday morning, precisely at eight o’clock: _Allen Walker and Howard Link. Killed in Action._

Heavy gales drive the rain into the windowpanes and rattle the shutters, the harsh pitter-patter distracting Komui as he’s trying to peruse this morning’s mountain of paperback. Despite the fact that his office had formerly been strewn with discarded papers and disorganized files, Bridgett Faye’s strict attempts to “set him straight” have left him feeling more overworked than ever. His inbox tray is never empty, his outbox always woefully bare. And his hands have started aching so much lately, he’s starting to wonder if he’s developing arthritis. At thirty.

He stares at the latest paper, a supply requisition form for the Science Division he needs to approve, and sighs. If arthritis is the worst ailment he’s dealing with, after all these years at the Black Order, then Komui supposes that makes him one of the lucky ones.

A image flashes before his eyes—rows and rows of caskets—and he slams the requisition form back on the desk in front of him. Bridgett, who’d been hovering near his bookcase, organizing out of place titles, starts and glances over her shoulder at him.

“Everything all right, Supervisor?” she says. 

He takes a deep breath and throws her his best smile. “My apologies, Bridgett. I’m just getting at tad frustrated at the Science Division. This is the third time this month they’ve run out of these same supplies.” He chuckles, dry and curt. “Maybe you should head over there sometime and reorganize their mess. They must have extra supplies squirrelled away in every nook and cranny.”

Instead of taking the joke, Bridgett frowns and replies, “If you’d like, Supervisor, I can put in a request to Central for more administrative personnel.”

Sighing inwardly, Komui holds up his hands, palms out, and shakes his head. “No, no. I can’t possibly bother Central about such a mundane matter. I’ll just ask Reever to be more diligent in the future.” 

“Very well.” Bridgett gives a small shrug and returns to her job on the bookcase.

Komui stares at her for a moment, then tracks his gaze to the quivering window. It’s been raining since late last night, and he’s starting to wonder if the storm will ever give up the ghost, or if the Order is doomed to listen to the haunting wails and driving downpour forever. As if Headquarters needs anything else degrading its morale.

His eyes drop to the requisition form again, but his vision blurs, distorting the words, and for the next several minutes, all he does is listen. To the storm. To Bridgett’s shuffling. To the lingering silence in the shadows. He doesn’t hear what he wants to hear—someone, anyone, rushing in with good news concerning the whereabouts of Allen and Inspector Link. He doesn’t hear what he _doesn’t_ want to hear either—someone, anyone, rushing in with terrible news about the fate of the boy who won’t stop walking and the Central Inspector glued to his side.

They vanished two days ago. With no warning.

Up until the moment the golems stopped broadcasting, everything had appeared to be fine. Allen and Link had checked in twice, first when they’d reached their final train stop, and then again when they made it to the town where the Innocence shard was supposedly lurking. They’d made no mention of a dangerous environment, or any mysterious phenomena that would indicate extreme akuma activity or Noah involvement. There had been nothing at all to suggest they were walking into anything beyond a standard retrieval mission.

And yet, they’d vanished off the face of the Earth. There one second, Allen laughing, Link scowling…and gone the next. What had happened in those hours where they’d been out of contact? An ambush? An abduction? Had the Noah come for Allen? Had they been overwhelmed by a superior force and killed on the battlefield?

There’s no way to know, unfortunately, until the Finders he sent to scout the area return with their reports. If they return… 

And that’s another thing that doesn’t add up. The original Finder that made the report about the Innocence—he’s no longer responding to communication attempts either.

Komui picks up a nearby pen and signs the requisition form without reading the entire supply list, then slips the form into the outbox. _There’s something strange happening here,_ he thinks, _but I can’t figure out what it—_

“Supervisor, your rate of paperwork completion has significantly slowed in the past ten minutes.” Bridgett is now standing in front of his desk. He hadn’t even heard her move, he’d been so lost in his own mind. She taps her clipboard against her hip. “Do not forget it’s my responsibility to make sure you complete all your work on time. If you miss deadlines, it reflects poorly on me, and that’s unacceptable. As such, please concentrate on the work you have for this morning”—she nods at the stack in the inbox—“and refrain from idle contemplation until the lunch hour.” 

Komui drops the pen on the desk and opens his mouth to give Bridgett a piece of his—

The office door bursts open.

Bridgett wheels around, dropping her clipboard and nearly toppling over into the chair in front of Komui’s desk. Komui almost jumps out of his seat, heart racing in his chest, because the last time something crashed in on him unexpectedly, it was a Level 4 akuma trying to assassinate him without the least bit of hesitation or remorse.

But the figure in the door is not an akuma, or a Noah for that matter.

It’s Reever.

Hunched over, like he’s run ten miles to get here. Breathing hard. And yet, his face is pale, drained of blood. He pushes himself away the doorframe as he shuffles into the room, like he needs the extra support to force himself to move. As he approaches, Komui spies a small black golem clutched in his right hand, and he’s gripping it so hard, knuckles white, that the Supervisor is worried Reever will crush it before it has a chance to convey its record.

Reever pushes by Bridgett as if she isn’t even there and stops in front of Komui’s desk, looming over him. For a moment, the man that Komui would trust with his life says absolutely nothing. Out loud. His eyes, half-lidded and hopeless, stare at nothing on Komui’s desk, aimed at a chip in the wood that God knows what made years ago. Reever shakes, even worse than the shutters under the force of the brutal winds, and when he finally, finally brings himself to meet his friend’s gaze—Komui already knows what he’s going to say.

It’s the news Komui has been dreading for days.

But he lets Reever speak first anyway—because he can’t bear the thought of being the first to say it. To say _this._

Reever sets the golem on Komui’s desk and slowly pushes it toward him. His lips part. He speaks, so softly that Komui doubts Bridgett can hear, standing only a few feet away. “This just came in from the Finders you sent out a few days back. They recorded a thorough survey of the area where Allen and Link were supposed to be searching for the Innocence. It…it’s been destroyed, Komui. Almost a third of the town. Rubble. Ash. Burned and blackened. An explosion I can’t even fathom—” He chokes over his own words and pauses, trying to compose himself.

Komui opens his mouth to speak, to tell Reever he’s said enough, but he finds the words won’t emerge. His throat is parched, like desert sand, and all he can do is wait with his heart frozen, silent and still, in his chest, until Reever continues. 

Until he says the words that Komui will have to repeat again, and again, and again, to every Exorcist, Finder, scientist, secretary—to himself in the mirror until he believes them.

Reever says: “They’re gone, Komui. Allen and Link. They’re…they’re dead.”

 

***

 

The cold wind whips at Kanda’s face, stinging his skin, his lips, but he ignores it. The world is always trying to erase him—burning his skin with too-bright sunlight, sweating him dry with hot, humid temperatures, infecting him with diseases smeared across walls in invisible streaks—and it never works. There’s a seal on his chest designed to prevent his death, over and over and over, and it acts on slow misery the same way it acts on bloody wounds. It doesn’t discriminate. It just heals.

So Kanda ignores the frigid air trying to peel his face off and trudges through the deepening snow back toward Moscow. The lights are still distant, taunting him as they flicker through the snowfall, and he has half a mind to cuss them out, as if the people in their cozy homes miles away will hear him. He only stays silent not out of respect but out of pride—he doesn’t want anyone to hear him admit he’s privy of his failure.

This wasn’t supposed to be a difficult mission, beyond the terrain. Two Finders were waiting for him, camped out in the snow in the godforsaken woods, a few miles outside of Moscow, with an Innocence shard hidden somewhere among the trees nearby. It had been creating phantoms, ghostly images, that scared the locals. Nothing dangerous. Just annoying and creepy enough to set off the rumors.

The Finders hadn’t reported any akuma activity—they thought they’d caught this one early.

They were wrong.

Kanda, marching his way across the hard-packed snow from the morning, had known something was wrong when one of the Finders failed to meet him at the edge of the forest. Well, that and the fact that the forest was completely silent. No animals. No wind. Nothing. Just a heavy atmosphere, weighing on the branches even harder than the snow. 

He’d located the Finders two hours later. What was left of them—two piles of ash vaguely shaped like human beings. The akuma had emerged from the shadows of the forest and taken them so fast they hadn’t been able to report back to Headquarters. 

But had the akuma been fast enough to find the Innocence first as well?

Unfortunately, the answer turned out to be _yes_. Kanda discovered where the Innocence shard had been hiding, a nook in a large tree at the epicenter of where the townsfolk had reported their “ghosts.” It was easy to find because it had been blown up. All that was left was a million splinters, stuck in the snow, in an arc around the jagged stump of the tree. 

Kanda guessed a Level 3 had done the dirty work, and had been ordered back with the Innocence instead of sticking around to face off with the Exorcist who’d inevitably come to retrieve it. The Noah had been skittish that way lately, ever since they’d lost the akuma egg during the failed invasion. Kanda is sure they are plotting something, will come back with a vengeance sooner or later—but for now, all the Order has to work with is akuma skirmishes and retrievals. 

Kanda wouldn’t mind the normalcy of it all if he didn’t know a vicious storm was brewing on the horizon. 

Defeated, undeniably, Kanda had taken a few good kicks at the pointy stump, turned on his heels, and marched off back toward Moscow. And that was how he found himself in his current predicament: sinking into fresh, sticky snow that whipped about in the air, clinging to his clothing, blocking his view of the city in the distance.

He’d have probably been better off staying in the Finders’ little camp, which had been intact, besides the two corpses. But he hadn’t thought of that at the time, because he’d been so pissed about losing the Innocence. So he hadn’t paid attention to the brewing blizzard right in front of his fucking face—until it inevitably met him halfway back to the inn he was holing up in. 

Kanda pauses and adjusts his scarf to cover the lower half of his face. Sure, his seal will keep him alive, but it won’t make it comfortable for him. He’s shivering, as much as he hates to admit it, limbs quaking hard underneath his inadequate clothing. It’s dusk, and he hadn’t bargained on being out this late in the day. That’s a stupid mistake even for someone who can’t die. Everybody knows what happens when a moron takes on a Russian winter.

Kanda would expect this sort of dumb mistake from the _beansprout_ , not himself.

He swears into the fabric of his scarf and then picks up his pace again, trekking back toward the lights that finally, finally, appear to be growing closer. He’s probably got another half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, before he reaches the inn on the outskirts of the city, but despite being half-frozen already, he’s sure he can make it. If he doesn’t stop moving for too long—if he does that, his legs will probably freeze in place, and some bastard will find him blue and icy, like a goddamn statue, in the morning. 

He shakes the absurd thought from his mind and concentrates on the task at hand. _So help me, if Komui sends me on another mission to this frozen hell, I’ll—_

“—da.”

Kanda starts and peers around. Where had that sound come from? 

“Kanda?”

He glances down at his chest, and suddenly feels something moving, inside his hidden inner pocket. _Oh_. Muttering under his breath, the sounds lost in the wailing wind, he digs his golem out of his coat and holds it close to his face. “Komui,” he nearly shouts into the machine, “is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me.” Komui’s voice is much calmer, though it’s still loud, amplified by the golem to let Kanda hear over the wind. “Are you all right? What’s that sound?” 

“A blizzard,” Kanda snarls. “I’m in the middle of a blizzard. I’m on my way back to the inn.”

Komui is silent for a moment. “…and the Innocence?”

“Lost it. The akuma got there first. The Finders are dead.”

Komui is silent for even longer. “Ah, I see. Well…”

Kanda stares down at the squirming golem in his hand. It’s strange, he thinks. Komui usually isn’t that emotionless when Kanda mentions someone has died. Regardless of their role in the Order, Komui values—or at least to pretends to value—everyone equally. Yet his response to the Finders’ demise was flat, if not downright indifferent. Why would he act that way…unless something more _urgent_ is currently happening back at the Order?

“Do you need something?” Kanda yells into the golem. “Is there an emergency?”

Komui’s silence is so long this time around that Kanda thinks he’s lost the connection. But, at last, the man replies, “Of a sort. I have a new mission for you.”

“What?” Kanda balks and nearly tosses the golem into the whipping winds. “Is that why you called me? I’m standing knee deep in snow, having my skin raked off by blizzard winds, and you actually call me to schedule in another mission? Isn’t there anyone else there? Marie? Lenalee? The fucking sprout? If not, can’t this wait until I get back? Or at least until I’m not sixty percent ice?” 

“Kanda…” Komui’s voice drops into a tone Kanda never likes to hear. The one he uses at mass funerals. The one he uses when another shred of their vain hope shatters. “This isn’t a normal mission. And I _don’t_ want you coming back to Headquarters until you’ve completed it. In fact, depending on how this goes, I may not want you to come back at all.”

Kanda stops then, stops moving, becomes the ice statue in spirit, if not in form. “What…the hell do you mean by that?”

Komui’s voice drops even lower, to a tone so dark that Kanda thinks, for a second, he’s been fooled. It’s not Komui on the line but someone else, some impersonator wearing Komui’s skin like a goddamn akuma. “I received a report this morning, from France. A report that states Exorcist Allen Walker and Inspector Howard Link were killed in action by an akuma ambush while on an Innocence retrieval mission.”

Kanda’s fingers slip off the golem, and the tiny machine struggles to stay in one place in the violent winds. “I don’t…what? The sprout’s _dead_?” How can the beansprout be dead? With his stupid fake smile and his stupid bravado and his stupid, incessant need to protect everyone and everything he can see with his stupid, cursed face?

How can…wait.

How could the sprout have been bested by _akuma_? He’s immune to the virus, and he’s a fucking critical. There’s no way he could have been taken down by anything less than a Level 4, and even then, he wouldn’t have let Two Spots get killed by it too. He would have forced the Inspector to run, one way or another, opened an Ark Gate without permission and pushed the man through—something.

So how can they _both_ be dead?

If there weren’t any Noah, and Komui had specifically said akuma, and…

“Komui,” Kanda growls into the golem, “what you just said makes no sense.”

Komui simply responds, “I know.”

And Kanda understands. He snatches the golem and holds it close to his peeling lips. “What do you need me to do?” 

“Go to Allen and Link’s last known location. If they’re truly dead, figure out how they died. If they’re still alive, try and find them as quickly as possible. Because if they’re alive—”

“Then whoever tried to kill them will probably still be after them.”

“Right.”

Kanda stares at the flickering lights, close but still so far to walk in the deadly, deepening snow. “Do I contact you?” 

“Paper only. Mailed to an address I’m about to give you.”

“Uh huh.” Kanda closes his eyes and breathes in frozen air, thick like cement in his throat. “And the golem?”

“Destroy it.” Komui takes a breath so deep, it mimics the primal roar of the storm. “As of this moment, Yuu Kanda, you are missing in action.”


End file.
